Re-write one of the midterm essays, will be marked out of a potential extra 10% to the overall grade

• 1500-2000 word limit
• Requires citations and a list of works cited
  • In-text or footnote are fine, so long as you consistently follow an established practice (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.)
  • Minimum two primary or scholarly sources in addition to a textbook (so minimum 3, though more will probably help)
• Must BOTH upload to Blackboard AND hand in a physical copy by the class on 6 December

Option A: traditional exam, at the allotted time, comprising identifications and source analysis questions ONLY

Option B: three take-home essays

• Choice of questions
• One from ancient or medieval, two modern
• Same guidelines as the extra credit essay (word limit, citations, submission guidelines)
• Prompts will be handed out in-class and made available on Blackboard on 29 November
• BOTH upload to Blackboard AND hand in a physical copy in class on 6 December
  • Note the syllabus for caveats about academic honesty

• The Protestant Reformation
  • The "Witch craze"
• Age of Discovery
  • Matteo Ricci

• The papacy had become more powerful, but lost legitimacy as the leader of Western Christianity
  • "Babylonian Captivity" in Avignon, France (1305-1377)
  • "Great Schism" where there were three simultaneous popes (1378-1417)
  • Fall of Constantinople (1453) brought its patriarch under Ottoman rule
  • Indulgences, granting people remission from punishment for their sins, became crass transactional objects, bought and sold
• Dramatized in The Borgias (2011-2013), a miniseries by Bravo!, which is set at the turn of the 16th century

Piers Plowman was written in Middle English by William Landland in the late 14th century. It ridiculed the corruption, ignorance, and worldliness of the church and of religious orders.

I found there friars · of all the four orders,

Preaching to the people · for profit to themselves,

Explaining the Gospel · just as they liked,

To get clothes for themselves · they construed it as they would.

Many of these master friars · may dress as they will,

For money and their preaching · both go together. . . .

There preached a pardoner · as if he priest were:

He brought forth a brief · with bishops' seals thereon,

And said that himself · might absolve them all

From falseness in fasting and of broken vows.

Laymen believed him · welcomed his words,

And came up on their knees · to kiss his seals;

He cozened them with his brevet · dimmed their eyes,

And with his parchment · got his rings and brooches:

Thus they gave their gold · gluttons to keep.

–

Pairs discussion: Who get criticized in this passage? For what actions? Who do you imagine the intended audience is?

• Waldensians (late 12th century, France and Italy), practiced radical poverty and temperance
• Lollards (late 14th/early 15th century England) used a vernacular scripture and preached consubstantiation
• Hussites, followers of Jan Hus (1369-1415) from modern Czezhia, became both a religious reform and proto-nationalist movement
• Conciliar Movement (early 15th century) sought to reform the church from within, but faced stiff resistance from the popes

Martin Luther (1529), by Lucas Cranach the Elder

• An Augustinian friar, a priest, and a professor at the University of Wittenberg
• Luther proposed the Ninety-five Theses in 1517, challenging the pope's authority to issue indulgences
• His teachings were denounced at the Diet of Worms in 1521, leading to his excommunication and changing his refmornist movement into a separate church, Lutheranism
  • Emperor Charles V (who was also King of Spain) sided with Pope Leo X
  • Some German princes chose to support Luther and his church,
• Luther married a former nun, Katherine von Bora, in 1523
• Translated the bible into German in 1534

Vater unser im Himmelreich (Our Father in Heavan), Pachelbel's adaptation

On 31 October 1517 (the eve of All Saint's Day), Martin Luther proposed his Ninety-five Theses in Wittenberg, Germany (famously nailed to the door of All Saints' Church)

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said "Poenitentiam agite"Repent," willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.

2. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons.

3. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved.

Pairs discussion: Who is Luther directly challenging? Why would this lead him to be condemned as a heretic?

• German Peasants' War (1524-1525) adopted some protestant rhetoric, but was crushed by both Catholic and Protestant princes
• Anabaptists (re-baptizers) believed in the imminence of the apocalypse
  • seized the city of Münster in 1535 and experimented with polygamy and carried out iconoclasm at churches and monasteries
  • Survivors renounced violence, and would become Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish
• Council of Trent (1545-1563) finally, belatedly, instituted a series of structural reforms to the Catholic Church, starting the Counter-Reformation
• Peace of Augsburg (1555) temporarily ended hostilities between Catholics and Lutherans in the HRE

• Originally the Dukes of Austria, they inherited the throne of Spain and dominated Europe from the 16th through 18th centuries
• Built an overseas empire in the Americas, defended against Protestantism at home, and held back the Ottomans under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566)
  • The Ottoman siege of Vienna occurred in 1529, and although defeated still gained territory in Hungary and the lower Danube
  • Battle of Lepanto (1571) saw the Holy League, led by Spain and Venice, win the first major victory over the Ottomans

The Habsburg Empire by the middle of the 16th century

• The largest group of Protestants in France were Huguenots
• The Valois dynasty, which defeated England in the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), went extinct in 1572, and the throne passed to Henry IV Bourbon, the protestant king of Navarre
  • Henry converted to Catholicism, but protected religious freedom with the Edict of Nantes (1598) which ended the Huguenot Wars (1562-1598)
• His son, Louis XIII relied heavily on his advisor Armand Jean du Plessis, the Cardinal Richelieu, ending religious tolerance and crushing the Huguenot rebellions (1621-1629)
  • Setting for Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (set 1625-1628)

Cardinal Richelieu at the Siege of la Rochelle, 1627-28, painted by Henri Motte, 1881.

• Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547) of "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived" fame, established the protestant Church of England at least in part as a means of securing his changes in marital status
• His younger daughter, Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) restored the CoE to protestantism and defended England against the Spanish Armada (1588)
• The 17th century in England was dominated by activity meant to keep protestants in control of the country
  • James VI and I Stuart, King of Scotland (from 1567) and England (1603-1625)
  • English Civil War (1642-1651)
  • Glorious Revolution (1688)

• This is, of course, the period of Shakespeare (1564-1616)
• Wolf Hall, BBC miniseries dramatizing the establishment of protestantism under Henry VIII
• The Tudors (2007-2010), a Showtime miniseries about Henry VIII, with significant historical inaccuracies
• Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) both take significant dramatic license
• Other (worthy?) mentions: Pocahontas (1995); The New World (2005); Shakespeare in Love (1998)

• Not a feature of the middle ages
• Lasted 1450-1750, estimates of at least 35,000 executions
  • Requires widespread belief in witches and their magical powers
  • Requires a state which (a) recognizes witchraft, (b) calls for its punishment, and (c) is capable of enforcing its will
  • New concerns for the devil, his powers, and belief in his role as leader or at least focal point of a (fantasy) Witches' Sabbath ritual
• Trier Witch Trials (1581-1593) were probably the largest mass execution in Europe in peacetime
• Learned occultism of many Renaissance figures, including Nicolas Flamel, Leonardo da Vinci, Nostradamus, Paracelsus, and Isaac Newton

The Obscene Kiss by Francesco Maria Guazzo (1608)

Inasmuch as it was popularly believed that the continued sterility of many years was caused by witches through the malice of the Devil, the whole country rose to exterminate the witches. And so, from court to court throughout the towns and villages of all the diocese, scurried special accusers, inquisitors, notaries, jurors, judges, constables, dragging to trial and torture human beings of both sexes and burning them in great numbers. Scarcely any of those who were accused escaped punishment. … Meanwhile notaries, copyists, and innkeepers grew rich. The executioner rode a blooded horse, like a noble of the court, and went clad in gold and silver; his wife vied with noble dames in the richness of her array. The children of those convicted and punished were sent into exile; their goods were confiscated; plowman and vintner failed hence came sterility. A more dire pestilence or a more ruthless invader could hardly have ravaged the territory of Trier than this inquisition and persecution without bounds: many were the reasons for

doubting that all were really guilty. At last, though the flames were still unsated, the people grew impoverished, rules were made and enforced restricting the fees and costs of examinations and examiners, and suddenly, as when in war funds fail, the zeal of the persecutors died out.

Tr. Burr (1912)

Pairs discussion: The author (Linden) expresses some scepticism about the witch craze in Trier. What parts does he appear to believe in? What aspects of the persecution does he (implicitly, at least) criticize?

• Spain colonized the Americas rapidly, other European powers only began to get a toehold by the end of this period
• Portugal (politically united with Spain from 1580-1640) dominated trade-routes eastward, and was challenged by the Dutch from the mid-16th century
• Representatives of the Catholic Church and religious orders accompanied expeditions in both directions
  • Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) was a Dominican friar who became apalled the brutality of the Spanish encomienda system. He helped preserve knowledge of Myan culture and writing, and devoted his life to advocating the rights of the natives and the concept of universal human dignaty

• Born in Italy, after becoming a Jesuit priest he applied to join the society's missionary expeditions to the far East
  • In 1578 he traveled from Lisbon to Goa, and then in in 1582 went on to Macau. He remained in China for the rest of his life, becoming the leader of the Jesuit China mission from 1597 until his death
  • Learned to speak, read, and write classical Chinese
  • Translated Ancient Greek and Latin works into Chinese and translated Confucian classics into Latin for the first time
• He made great efforts to adapt Catholic Christianity for Confucian Chinese culture, efforts preceived as going too far by many of his own contemporaries
• https://president.georgetown.edu/inculturation.html

Matteo Ricci, Map of the Myriad countries of the World, 1602

Pairs discussion: In what ways has Ricci tailored this map to be sinocentric (focused on China)? In what ways is this map eurocentric (focused on Europe)?

• Pitted the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church against the Protestant Union, an alliance of anti-Catholic and anti-Habsburg states
  • Merged with the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) of the Dutch Republic against Habsburg Spain
• Estimated as many as 8,000,000 dead, one of if not the most destructive wars in history prior to the 19th century
• Peace of Westphalia (1648) established the concept of national sovereignty
  • Exclusive sovereignty and non-interference over territory and domestic affairs
  • Equality of states in international law
  • Cuius regio, eius religio - whose real, his religion

N. Goldstone, The Rival Queens: Catherine de' Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and the Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom (2016).

P. Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (2009).

J.J. Norwich, Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe (2017).

L. Pierce, Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire (2017)

J.D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1985).